But... but... ...
Seriously, I think my main beef with the game was the battle system. Random encounters and real time battles don't fit IMO, at least not in the way they did it in ToS. I also thought the storytelling sucked pretty hard.

As long as we don't have any flame wars and can respect opinions, it's all good in the hood.

And I can also see where you're coming from with the action RPG fighting format. It can be weird at times, but I'm more used to it because I'm a fan of the Star Ocean series. And wasn't Legend of Mana like that, too? I forget.